May 9, 2013

Editorial Comment

Spring is often the time when talk in the office turns to pay raises and salary increases. The same often holds true for top company managers. But if you are running a company, discussions about your pay can get complicated. The reason is that companies have caught a lot of flack from politicians over the years about how they pay their top people. When he was campaigning in the 1990s, for example, Bill Clinton wanted to stop companies from being able to deduct “excessive executive pay” from their taxes....More

Silly Specs
Your editorial on odd specifications (“Silliness at 40 Below,” Nov. 20) struck a chord with me. Working on five continents, I’ve seen numerous instances of “silly specifications” in many cultures and languages and I’m always amazed at how, once written, specs seem to acquire biblical respect and authority....More

Engineers looking for capable suppliers have unlimited amounts of data instantly available through powerful online search engines. But access to more data has not necessarily made supply-chain management more efficient or effective. A search may return 100,000 results; the engineer may only look at 5 or 10 of them. Are they the best suppliers, or just the best at search-engine optimization? And, particularly with custom manufacturers, it is not always easy to determine their qualifications for a project....More

In a recent incident an employee was on a roof conducting routine preventive maintenance on a refrigeration unit. As he walked around on the roof, he accidentally stepped on a skylight and broke through. He fell 25 feet to a cement warehouse floor and was hospitalized with severe injuries....More

It looks like NASA managers are mangling the concepts of setting goals and facing budgetary realities if reports about a future mission are to be believed. Some time ago, NASA decided on sending a manned spacecraft to get up close and personal with an asteroid by 2025, a plan endorsed by the current White House....More

Scanning for Ideas

The DK Series of switches from Cherry Corp., Pleasant Prairie, Wis. (www.cherrycorp.com), measure just 0.579 × 0.213 × 0.268 in. and carry ratings of IP65. (Versions protected to IP67 levels are also available.) The switches feature stainless-steel components, gold-plated contacts, and a PBT/ASA housing. These rugged parts give the switches a minimum life of 500,000 operations....More

Engineers often design carriages that move back and forth atop of a pair of parallel nonrotating shafts. These shafts must remain parallel or the carriage will wedge to a dead stop. So it is important that supports keep the shafts aligned. This can be a problem with traditional support blocks that keep the shaft locked into place with a cap screw located above and perpendicular to the shaft. With tradtional blocks, the shaft has to be inserted through the hole, a task that requires extra space on either end of the support....More

News

Could an electric car someday run at Indy? It’s a distinct possibility judging by developments in Formula 1 racing. Starting next year, all-electric cars will have their own racing class running under the auspices of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the same organization that handles Formula 1 racing....More

A small and ultralight UAV developed by engineers at Festo, Esslingen, Germany, reportedly can match the highly complex flight capabilities of a dragonfly. Called the BionicOpter, the robotic insect can fly in any direction — even backwards — turn and accelerate quickly, hover, and glide without beating its wings. It’s said to be the first aircraft that flies like a helicopter, plane, and glider....More

Several alternative-energy sources will only be practical if power companies have an economical way to store harvested energy. And U. S. grid operators will need methods of storing electricity to balance and maintain the national grid if alternative sources are to provide a majority of the nation’s power. With that in mind, researchers at Stanford University developed a way to calculate the costs of building and deploying a variety of energy-storage technologies....More

Technicians at Sandia National Laboratory have strung miles of half-inch fiber-optic cables between 13,000 network ports in 265 buildings to construct the largest fiber-optic LAN in the world. The cables, consisting of 288 fibers, replace 4-in....More

After testing 122 commercially available laser pointers, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that 90% of the green and 44% of the red pointers did not comply with federal safety regulations. In fact, they often emitted more power than allowed, and green lasers also tended to put out unacceptable levels of IR light as well....More

Features

One of the major changes computers have injected into the Indianapolis 500 over the past two decades is the widespread use of simulation. No longer do designers or race teams have to schedule racetrack time to determine the effects of a small tweak to the aerodynamics or front shock absorbers, a costly and time-consuming process. Instead, they can juggle a few parameters in a detailed computer model of the car and then run it over a truly realistic model of a specific racetrack....More

In tough economic times, tight capital budgets often force companies to delay purchases of new equipment. Yet they face the ongoing need to increase productivity. Fortunately, upgrading the motion systems on existing machines can bring many of the benefits of new equipment at a fraction of the cost....More

Products

The Model RS rolling-ring linear-drive family now includes the RS8 drive nut. The new nut drive runs on an 8-mm-diameter, case-hardened and ground, smooth shaft with no threads to trap debris and cause clogs or jams, providing built-in overload protection. Drive-system components are protected from possible damage from the churning and grinding that sometimes occurs with linear-drive devices, resulting in less downtime for cleaning threads and making repairs....More

A new shaft collar for high-pressure washdown applications consists of a 303 stainless-steel shaft collar, male and female shrouds made from FDA-compliant materials, and three O-rings with FDA-compliant lubrication....More

Antibackbend chains, flexible in only one direction, are used for pushing loads and can bridge larger gaps without a guidance system. Applications include adjustable operation chairs, hospital beds, or mixing units for dental impressions....More

An extensive range of standard and customized couplings are available for use in power-transmission applications. The couplings, combined with a wide range of sizes and bores, allow the mechanical connection of two rotating shafts so power can be transmitted from one shaft to the other. They also compensate for shaft misalignment that could adversely affect velocity and acceleration of the driven shaft....More

Torq-Tender overload safety couplings, for washdown applications, clean up easily, won’t corrode, and operate in a wide temperature range. The couplings provide torque limiting and coupling functions and serve both as a safety device and coupling in power-transmission systems by protecting motor and drive systems from jam-ups and excessive overloading....More

Fully interchangeable with the company’s 01 and 02 Series bearings, the new 01E (medium-duty) and 02E (heavy-duty) split-roller bearings provide up to 29% more radial capacity and 16 to 90% more axial-load capacity....More